1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for estimating the direction of arrival of a radio wave and, more particularly, to a radio wave direction-of-arrival estimation apparatus and method, for use at a radar or radio base station or the like, that receives a single radio wave or a plurality of radio waves arriving from various directions by an array antenna constructed from a plurality of antenna elements and that estimates the direction of arrival of the radio waves at high speed and with good accuracy.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the prior art, there have been proposed a variety of radio wave direction-of-arrival estimation techniques for estimating the direction of arrival of radio waves by using an array antenna constructed from a plurality of antenna elements. Classical methods known in the art include the beam former method, the Capon method, and the linear prediction method; further, high-resolution techniques such as MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) and ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques) are also known in the art. These techniques are described in detail by Nobuyoshi Kikuma in “Adaptive Signal Processing by Array Antenna,” Kagaku Gijutsu Shuppan, Nov. 25, 1998, pp. 173-268.
In recent years, MUSIC and ESPRIT, which are capable of achieving high resolution, have been used widely, and research has been proceeding. However, with MUSIC and ESPRIT, as the direction of arrival is estimated by performing eigenvalue decomposition, the amount of computation is enormous, and it is difficult to speed up the estimation process.
On the other hand, with the Capon method and the linear prediction method, as eigenvalue decomposition is not required, the estimation process can be speeded up, but both methods require the calculation of an inverse matrix, which poses a problem. In addition, when a plurality of incoming waves having high correlation are received, the correlation matrix of the received signals is often singular; in this case, if its inverse matrix is calculated, the obtained inverse matrix may become a singular solution or the computation may stop; therefore, it takes time to estimate the direction of arrival or the estimation accuracy may drop and, in the worst case, it may become impossible to output the estimation result.